Even though I had an incredible possible journey planned and paid for, I didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave my comfort zone that had started to become a prison cell. For the past year, at least, I had dreamt of moving forward with my career and life, to change the very foundations of my life. But to ponder this was a far cry from actually doing it. However, I have some awesome coworkers and a best friend who made me keep my commitment to myself. (thank you for that)

It has taken me some time to fully process this adventure I had back in November. That is part of the reason I have been so quiet as of late. But, the Christmas holiday is complete, and with the soft falling snow resting heavy and thick outside, and the town around me at a standstill, I thought now was a perfect time to dive into it.

But the moment that I truly committed to this journey everything started to shift for me. Arriving at the new city I had gained my independence from friends and family; no longer had to wait for them to deplane or get their bags. I was free to choose my own path! I got a car and headed into the city. Everything was crisp and beautiful, and the city was a colossal beautiful spread out before me. I have never walked as much as I had in a new city like I did on the trip. The purity and light of the place seemed to echo with its vibrancy, the creativity of its residents was in the city air I breathed, allowing me to sigh happily as I reveled in everything I saw and everyone I met.

The depression and feeling stuck in muck in my life had left me during this time and I could see past it, and into a bright future.

I had quite the adventure! I met up with a new friend and together we saw a beautiful city, met some of its residents and enjoyed how charming and sweet they were, journeyed to mecca of Three men and felt inexorably changed by everything we saw, tasted, touched or experienced. (I am saving the specifics for my journal and my memory, hints can be found in my Instagram, as that is not the point of this piece.) However, with my new Canadian friend, and guided by our hopes and quite a lot of luck, we managed to make the adventure even more brilliant, revel in the teams accuracy at a hockey game, witness a charity baseball game, while there came quite close to some of the entourage of an ideal/complete creative force and feeling completely transformed after an epic concert that left me wondering about my own fate and future.. Electric lazaretto blue sensory overload to be sure.

Now, my feelings and thoughts of where I want to go from here are not due to a fantasy or fanatic revel, but there was a glimmer of what my future could be if I really put my blood sweat and tears into changing the course of my life. I want to be there, in that beloved location, soaking up the creativity that runs through the heart of that city, soaking in the southern charm and being transformed forever. As I already have been with the small three-day window I was there.. Just Three. my new favorite number, (and yes, if you know who I am referring to you may see the connection there.) Three days that uplifted my soul, let me breathe, become more me than I have been in the past 20 years and shake off this loss and grief and, again, start to become something other than the sad little-lost self that I have been for too long.

I cried when I had to leave, cried when the plane lifted off the ground and I quickly wiped my tears away, knowing I would be back and didn’t want to explain to the stranger sitting to my left. I wrote, and thought, and sought out the signs of this transformation to continue.. and cried when I landed in the brown, utterly desolate landscape that I have lived in for the past twenty years, and used to love. But now it is revealing itself to me to be my past. My past reincarnation, as well as my past present life.. I can no longer stay here, or I will rot in a creative grave, and let myself never become. I need to become, grow, thrive, truly live! And for the first time since the loss of life slammed me to my very foundations of who I thought I was, wiping away any hope of a good life.. I know where I want to be, and who I want to become.

I have to finish the projects before me. In this contemplation month I have managed to complete the minimizing project, and realize what it will take to make this new life a reality in the new year. I have already started to throw things out mentally as well as literally, that no longer serve my new purpose of life, letting this new freedom and independence and hard work start to give way to something that glistens like gold in my future. My past life will form into something unique and beautiful, in book and film form, with small vignettes of old west history travels before I leave this place.

There is a lot to do and to keep trudging up this hill I look ahead and see the writing and historical projects complete, music videos to work, a restless soul finding peace, the land sold, and myself ready to become… and so the journey continues..